


Drawn On My Soul

by vexedcer



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Art, Artist Steve Rogers, Drawing, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Painting, Period-Typical Homophobia, Slice of Life, Slow Build, Steve and Sam don't just go chasing after Bucky, at least not total ones, bc they're not fucking idiots, i need to stop adding tags to this, in this fic - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:32:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vexedcer/pseuds/vexedcer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers first discovers his love for art when he is seven years old.</p><p>He would never realise how important it would be to him</p><p>-</p><p>He’s lying, bleeding out into the snow around him . As the train carries away the guy he loves, carries away all he’s really ever known, he thinks that, under different circumstances, Steve would have loved to draw this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drawn On My Soul

Steve Rogers first discovers his love for art when he is seven years old. He would never realise how important it would be to him. 

He draws on yesterday's newspaper, on scraps he finds at home, anything he gets his skinny pale fingers on.  

He draws apples and the view outside his bedroom window, and at first he's not great. But, hey, he's seven going on eight so he can get a little leeway.

Mrs Rogers, bless her soul, scrimps and saves for two months to get her son a decent sketch book for his birthday. The cover is leathery and black, and the pages are the same off-white of the walls in their cosy little home. Steve hugs her tight on the morning of the fourth, tells her that he loves her.

When he's nine, his drawings are significantly better, clear stories told by the shapes etched on pages.

He meets Bucky when he's nine and a half and from then on, his sketch book is full of almost nothing else. The curve of Bucky's prepubescent jaw and the shape of his eyes dominate, hidden among the more generic features.

He fills it when he's twelve, and the last page is divided between two portraits; his mother, curled up on their motheaten couch, a chipped mug in one hand and a battered novel in the other; and Bucky, the smoke flowing from his parted lips almost white against the darkly shaded background.

It seems almost stupidly poetic that it ends with the two most important things in his whole world.

Steve’s filled another by the time he’s fifteen, bought with his own money from the measly pence he makes doing odd jobs; working at the register in the corner store, painting signs, whatever he can get. Its filled with pictures of Brooklyn, the Statue of Liberty cutting a looming figure across the skyline, and of Bucky, adolescence dripping away slowly and irregularly, then all at once.

He doesn’t show anyone, because the pages are soaked with sentiment and love, plain to anyone who spares it more than a passing glance. People would think things, if he did, think things about him that would only make his regular fist fights and beatings more painstakingly thorough.

Bucky wouldn’t suffer much for it; he’s a notorious skirt chaser, flirting with any girl who was flattered enough to talk to him after he complimented her. Steve would be chalked up to a perverted pining queer, who got his rocks off by thinking about his best friend.

So Steve doesn’t let anyone see the pages, except Bucky, who looks at the skylines and points out geographical faults in the picture. Steve smacks him in the arm with the sketch book when he hands it back, a smile hidden under his long, dark lashes. He doesn’t say anything about the emotion poured into every drawing, how detailed and lovingly the arch of his eyebrow is sketched, the curve of his nose, the stubble of his jaw. Bucky doesn’t mention it and Steve hates him and loves him for it.

*

Steve only ever draws things that are important to him. His family; his Ma. His friends; Bucky. His home; New York.

*

Ray Brown is the first person who isn’t Bucky that sees inside Steve’s sketch pad. He’s sixteen, and Ray’s pushing nineteen. The older man starts hassling Steve in the street while he’s walking to met Bucky at one of their usual haunts, calling him all sorts of names, and its not long before they’re swinging at each other.

Steve drops the book during the fight, and Ray picks it up while one of his regular goons, Joe something-or-other, has the smaller man pinned to the wall. Joe’s got an arm braced against his throat and he smells heavily of tobacco, so the little air thats getting to Steve’s burning lungs is tainted, making him wheeze more than he already is.

Ray does some monologuing while he looks at the drawings, reading in between the obvious fat lines, between the delicate strokes of the pencil to the story it’s telling, right underneath the picture of Bucky with one helluva shiner. He can see all the love poured into it clear as day, talking like he’s reading from a textbook.

He takes out a box of matches from his pocket and pushes out the little drawer, all the while grinning maliciously, when Steve hears a familiar shout, and the even more familiar sound of pounding footsteps.

They crease as Bucky’s figure stops at the mouth of the alley they’re in, his hands already balled into fists at his side, like he’s itching to clock someone in the jaw with it.

“Give it here, Ray,” the brunet says warningly. His eyes are hard and dark, the controlled fury of a hurricane residing between the lids that Steve feels he can never quite capture right, for all the times he’s drawn them.

“This don’t concern you, Barnes, take a walk,” Ray sneers at him. “We’re just teaching Rogers here what people do to queers like him.” Ray looks back at Steve with disgust, his nose wrinkled like a foul smell had found its way inside.

Bucky steps forward, close enough to snatch the sketch book from the bully’s hand, but he doesn’t. It would rip the top page, the one of Bucky’s bruised face, if he forced it from Ray’s meaty grasp.

Steve knows that Bucky likes that one; told him so a couple of days ago when the purple and black flesh had turned yellow. Steve had thought about adding colour to the bruises, but decided against it; his colour blindness meant that he’d probably pick the wrong pencil and ruin it by making the damaged eye green or something. He could’ve asked Bucky, but Steve’s pride is nearly as big as Ray’s ego.

“This is your last warning, Ray, let him go and give me the sketch book.”

“And let a fairy like ‘im walk away? He’s t’ get what’s comin’ to ‘im -” Bucky’s right hook catches him on the nose, halting the end of the sentence. Theres the sound of skin on skin, blood spurting out over Ray’s cracked, dry lips and onto Bucky’s knuckles, over old scabs there not completely healed from his last tussle. Ray stumbles back in surprise, nearly losing his footing. He wipes under his nose, deep red staining the cuff, then stalks forwards towards Bucky.

Joe is fidgeting, trying to decide whether or not to help his friend, or to keep Steve against the wall. His arm presses tighter over his windpipe, effectively stopping his breathing altogether. Steve wiggles a little, trying to relieve the pressure, to no avail. He’s taken his eyes off the fight in favour of trying to get some oxygen to his fiery chest.

Steve hears the scuttle of fleeing footsteps moments after, rather than sees it. He nearly falls face first onto the concrete when Joe makes a run for it too, his knees buckling when all of his weight drops back flat onto his feet. He takes big gasping breaths of air, which his lungs don’t agree with.

Bucky mumbles “oh, shit” somewhere in front of him. Warm hands touch his shoulders, arms, chest. His best friend’s face swims before him, tears caused by his wheezing and gasping obscuring his already shitty vision. Bucky lays an open palm over Steve’s chest, coaxing each breath out of him in time with his own. It takes a few minutes for Steve’s breathing to get less shallow and laboured.

Bucky hands him his sketch book after hauling him to his feet. The cover’s scuffed and a little dirty, but the pages are all still intact. His friend chastises him for getting the shit kicked out of him again (“- the fourth time this week, Steve, its only Wednesday, for God’s sake -”), before throwing his arm over Steve’s shoulder, squeezing him to his side for a second. Steve almost misses how calculated the action is, how mindful of his hurts it is. His warm weight from shoulder to hip helps to ease the aches of the bruises forming under his shirt.

He feels a pang of embarrassment about Bucky having to run the bastards away. He always ends up doing that; jumping in, dragging Steve out. Steve knows that Bucky doesn’t think he’s weak, despite what the endless stream of doctor say, but his ego is wounded none the less.

“Knew somethin’ was wrong. You’re a slow-poke but no one’s that slow,” Bucky jabs at him, good-naturedly. Steve grunts at him in response, various body parts smarting.

They go back to Bucky’s, because its closer, and because no one’s home to ask questions, to fuss over the split lip Steve didn’t even realise he had. His parents won’t be home for another couple of hours at least, Mrs Barnes in the factories, Mr Barnes in the dock yard. Steve doesn’t think to ask where Bucky’s sisters are.

Bucky puts iodine on his friend’s various scraps, rolling his eyes when Steve winces. They chat aimlessly until the sun kisses the horizon, and Steve walks home in the rapidly chilling air.

His mother tsks at his lip and the grazes on his knuckles, but kisses his forehead. Heat radiates from that point, seeming to fill his whole body with comfortable warmth.

*

After his mother’s funeral, he doesn’t touch his sketch book for a full week.

Bucky encourages him to draw, and Steve - can’t. He can’t, and Bucky doesn’t get why he can’t. Steve doesn’t really understand why either, but its all he knows concretely. He feels like the colourful spinning top that Nancy Elliott from two doors down had when they were kids, whizzing along the pavement with nothing to hold onto.

When he keeps at him about it, Steve wants to punch Bucky for his meddling, cry on his shoulder and throw him out of his nee their apartment all at once. He settles for the first, and Bucky doesn’t even move out of the way of his fist, not expecting such a violent, unprovoked outburst from his normally calm friend.

Steve visibly deflates when his hand is by his side again, stuttering out an apology while his friend’s face blooms red, and he carefully puts a bandage over where the skin had broken on impact. Bucky shrugs it off, like your best friend punching you in the face was an everyday occurrence.

(Grief makes people do strange things, things they regret as soon as they have their head on straight. Bucky knows that, so he doesn't hold the attack against Steve.

Bucky feels a little guilty for pushing him; the kid’s mourning the only family he’s ever known. The least he can do is let him.

But looking at Steve like that, withdrawn and quiet, his hands clean instead of darkened with residue from shading; it’s not right. Steve’s usually a ray of fucking sunshine, even when he’s getting beaten to a pulp. The absence of that Steve terrifies Bucky more than he could have ever comprehended.

He knows that if Steve had a pencil between his pale fingers, he would be okay. But Steve won’t even look at his sketch book, and Bucky can’t think of any other course of action other than to nag at him.)

Bucky stays, and they talk about everything and nothing until the early hours, trading memories and the bottle of gin that was on the top shelf of the cupboard. The words they both really want to say are choked back, cut off on the way up their throats, caught in their chests.

Bucky loved Sarah like he does his own mother. She was all bright-eyes like her son, never questioned Steve when he stumbled home under Bucky’s arm, bleeding, saying the fight was worth it, and one of the most open people he’s ever met in this day and age. He’ll miss her too.

They sleep curled up in Steve’s cot, because this roof is drafty at night, and they tell themselves that that’s the only reason they’re squished together, back to chest.

The bed’s cold when Bucky wakes up, alone, hangover dragging him into wakefulness. The empty sheets bother him for reasons he won’t admit.

He stumbles out into the kitchen, where an untouched pot of porridge is left on the stove. He can hear shifting on the fire escape, so he makes a strong cup of black coffee for both him and his best friend. When Bucky slides the window open, Steve only acknowledges him with a noncommittal noise in his throat, focused on the sketchbook across his knobbly knees.

Bucky joins him on the rickety metal frame, and hands over the scalding mug. Steve swallows a mouthful, wincing when he burns his tongue before returning to his creation.

His fingers are working on the view beyond the metal bars in front of them, capturing the scene of the few miles from the little apartment to the bay. Bucky wonders how he can draw right now; he himself is suffering from a low-level headache as a result of the gin, and Steve definitely drank more than him.

Its early, but people still roam the streets, the sidewalks of their urban jungle. Bucky stares out and simply admires the view, the scritch-scratches of the pencil sounding to his left.

They don’t have moments like these often, quiet and relaxed, but Bucky saviors all of them. The two are often too wrapped up in their loving rudeness towards either other, or Steve’s picked a fight he has no way in finishing, or they’re listening to a baseball game on a battered wireless.

They are far and few between, and most of them happen when Steve’s sick, so Bucky thanks his lucky stars that Steve hasn’t caught a cold from the last week of substandard, grief-filled living.

The old buildings around them are lit with after dawn light, Bucky notices, head still thumping somewhat. The light colours the windows iridescent pinks and oranges. Plumes of smoke rise from the factories in the distance, and the faint echoes from the docks arrive at his ears. Sometimes he thinks that theres no way that Steve could ever capture the true beauty of their home in a drawing, but Steve’s always had a way of surprising Bucky.

“I did a number on you last night,” Steve says, sipping his coffee more conservatively. Bucky hums in agreement, despite not having seen the bruise caressing his jaw yet. “I shouldn’t’ve.”

“No, you shouldn’t’ve,” Bucky replies, only his tone isn’t harsh, no venom behind the words. Understanding, not unkind. “Don’t start apologising again, you look like a kicked puppy when you do that.”

“Do not,” Steve counters, bumping their shoulders together. They carry on in companionable silence, watching light creep into the forgotten corners of Brooklyn.

“She wouldn’t have wanted me to be moping around ‘cause of her being gone.” Steve says, when the sun is higher and Bucky’s head hurts less. He’s still looking down at his sketchbook when Bucky sneaks a sideways glance at him. “So I won’t.”

“Good. I was getting bored of you being such a laze-about, t’ be honest.” Steve smacks him with his sketchbook for that, a small smile tugging at his lips.

And, okay, Steve's not fine, not yet at least. His eyes are still empty, pupils like sea caverns, blue iris' in place of the water, and Bucky is drowning in the sorrow lurking under the surface.

Bucky’s fingers flex, wanting to wrap them around Steve’s and he wishes he had a cigarette between them to cover it up. But he can’t smoke this close to Steve or else he’ll hack up a lung.

Bucky has to leave to look for some work, but not before he tells Steve not to stay out there too long. Brooklyn’ll still be there after he eats.

*

Steve considers going to art school, considers it an awful lot, and Bucky praises the idea like the congregation at church, but he knows he would never manage to afford it.

*

When Bucky's on the boat to England, after he's drafted, he finds a folded square of paper in one of the foremost pockets of his pack. The edges are a little dirty from the canvas and there's a smudge of lead along the outer folds, most likely caused by someone smoothing their thumb over it while bending it.

He opens it, smiling fondly when he's met with the buildings outside the little apartment him and Steve scourged up enough to rent. Its a different angle from the one outside Steve's old place, but its still the same city, their home. It’s perfect, nearly. Bucky can still pick out faults in the geography.

It breaks his heart, in a small, unacknowledged way, and love is chasing the broken pieces where they lie as rubble in his chest. He's left his home behind him to fight a war that he didn't start.

Bucky chuckles to himself, because that's how its always been; fighting someone else’s battle. He was always finishing the one’s that Steve picked, anyways.

He folds the page back up, and sticks it inside his spare socks for safe keeping.

*

Steve pries one of the loose floorboards up, before he goes to Basic. He knows its there because its where Bucky hides his dirty mags and extra cigarettes, and he somehow thought that Steve hadn’t coped onto its existence.

His sketchbooks - the four of them - fit snugly into the space; Steve knows that they could get eaten by the mice that scurry unseen, or be consumed by the mould that grows in every old and damp building. But thats the better alternative than someone figuring him out.

The rest of his small possessions he fits into his pack, and Steve looks over their bare apartment with sorrow filled eyes, before turning away and not looking back.

*

Bucky looks at the drawing the way his fellow soldiers look at photos of their sweethearts. He doesn’t show it to the other guys, because it feels private.

Written in the shadows of Brooklyn is a love confession, intentional or not, and Bucky wishes he could send a letter telling Steve that he loves the punk, but everything going out gets screened. He can’t take the chance of one of superiors figuring them out.

*

Steve hates how big his new fingers are. His pencil looks like a painted twig in his hand.

*

Bucky loses Steve’s drawing before he gets strapped to a gurney in Zola’s lab, he supposes. He doesn’t really remember the before and the after, the memories hazy and blurred with pain. He doesn’t try to, after the first few attempts.

*

Bucky sees Steve doodling when he’s on watch, the pencil looking tiny and stick thin in his larger hand. The result is just as beautiful as when his hands were small and wrists dainty.

Steve lets him flip through the notebook, and Bucky smiles at the monkey clad in his friend’s red, white and blue spandex.

They don’t talk about the drawing Steve snuck into his pack, because they’re both as stubborn and stupid as each other.

*

When Bucky falls, the view around him is so glorious, so beautiful and picturesque, that he almost forgets that he’s falling to his death. The train is shrinking to a shiny square on black lines, the metal glinting with an unseen source as his body soars, almost flying through the air. The rattle of the engine fades along with the sound of the scream ripping its way from his throat, and the one that Steve let out when the bar broke.

He’s lying, bleeding out into the snow around him . As the train carries away the guy he loves, carries away all he’s really ever known, he thinks that, under different circumstances, Steve would have loved to draw this.

*

Steve’s hand itches for a pencil, for a paint brush, for _something_ , when he’s defrosted. He doesn’t submit. He’s convinced that the only thing he could create would be the look on his best friend’s face when he plunged to his death.

Steve breaks punching bags, runs, sits through briefings, sleeps little with shadows plaguing his nightmares. Repeats.

He lives on autopilot for three weeks, before Fury comes to him with a mission.

Get the Tesseract, contain Loki, lead a team of misfit superheroes into battle. Giving and following orders is something he can do. So he does.

*

After the Battle of New York he picks up the nearest pencil and draws until he falls asleep on top of his work. The pages are filled with Loki’s mischieves, the taut string of Clint’s bow before the arrow flies, the curve of Natasha’s neck as she shoulders a gun’s recoil, Tony as he flies as easily as a bird above his head.

Steve looks at them in the morning, when he feels more sane, and finds that Bucky isn’t looking up at him with wide, frightened eyes, outstretched hand grappling with the loosened bar.

He sleeps better.

*

He moves to DC to be closer to SHIELD HQ, and definitely not because being in New York makes his chest hurt in a way thats not linked cardiac problems. Steve knows the difference, considering he suffered from enough of them, back before he was turned into what the gossip columns call a Sex Symbol.

He can draw street corners and parks and anywhere now without nearly drawing a phantom Bucky because Bucky isn’t a part of the monotonous memories he’s making here.

He draws Natasha and the Washington Monument, the street outside his apartment and not his best friend.

*

He feels guilty because this city isn’t important to him, and yet he draws it anyway.

*

The less he draws Bucky, the less it bugs him. Steve figures that he’s finished grieving for his best friend. That’s what his SHIELD assigned therapist says, anyway. Which makes sense, he guesses, it’s been three years; for him, at least.

He feels better, even though his chest aches with a wound he doesn’t think will ever completely heal and scar over, fade pinkly into the cells of his skin like it was even never there. But he’s letting Bucky go, like he did his Ma, and he feels lighter somehow.

Sam Wilson asks what makes him happy, and even though he doesn’t know, he feels ready to find out.

*

In the months post-SHIELD’s collapse and Bucky’s rehabilitation, Steve doesn’t really have time to draw.

He tries to help clean up the mess, pick up the fall out of the leaked files, and track Bucky down at the same time. Its all kind of a disaster and he’s nine kinds of fucked up, with so little sleep and so much caffine and renewed grief about Bucky.

He should have known Bucky had survived, they did something to him in Zola’s lab, making him more resilient. Steve had left him there, Steve had let them take him - make him do - do things -

Sam takes away his files and his coffee maker, and makes him sleep. He also makes him call his therapist, who Fury vetted after everything went to shit. Steve goes to the session, but he still feels like he has a storm cloud over his head, like he’s stuck in some torrential downpour that would put New York Spring rain to shame. He has the bizarre thought about asking Thor if he could make it go away, y’know, being the God of Thunder an’all.

And when Bucky is captured by Fury’s men, Steve goes into overdrive, working and worrying himself to exhaustion. Sam and Natasha threaten to lock him in his bedroom periodically so he can sleep, and when that doesn’t work, they threaten to medicate him. He may be an genetically-enhanced super-soldier, but he needs to recharge his batteries too.

“You ain’t no help to your boy if you’re dead on your feet,” Sam tells him, worry pursing his lips as he watches Steve pour over the same file he poured over last night, and the night before. Sam was reluctant to give him the files back, and now he sees he was right to be. Steve doesn’t have the energy to tell him that him and Bucky weren’t actually together, even though they kind of were.

Steve scrubs his hand over his face, and feels stubble rasp against the thick skin of his palm. When was the last time he shaved? Three days ago? Four?

“Fine,” he sighs, conceding. The chair drags when he stands up.

*

The moment that Bucky sees him and knows who he is, Steve wants to cry. He’s spent four months watching him from behind the one-way glass that Tony and Natasha are standing behind now, and even longer reading all the reports that the unofficial, re-formed SHIELD sent his way.

He doesn’t want to start crying; his therapist tells him that crying is fine, its healthy.

But still. On principle.

They meet halfway in the room, before wrapping their arms around each other. Bucky’s metal arm is gone, shoulder empty, so only his right arm wraps up, around his neck. Steve coils his arms around his torso, and hugs him hard, harder than he ever has. Harder than the night after his Ma’s funeral, when Bucky came back to check up on him (he was smaller then, though, not as strong). Harder than when they got patched up after Zola’s lab, because then he was trying to mind all of Bucky’s injuries.

“I can’t believe you’re alive,” Steve blurts out, pressing his mouth to the crown of Bucky’s head. Its not a kiss, but its not anything else either. Tears well up and he’s thankful that he has his back to the one-way glass; he doesn’t want Tony or Natasha see him get emotional.

They pull apart and the other says in a slightly thick voice, “Likewise, pal.” The two sit down at the little table and chairs provided, and Steve really takes in the room, now that he’s been reacquainted with his friend.

It’s white and bare and spotless, like a cell. The only sign  of disarray is the creases on the bed sheets. The covers are tucked in, all hospital corners, but there are creases along the length of it, like someone was lying down on it recently.

Bucky is dressed in white pants that look like they’re from a set of scrubs and a sweatshirt with a SHIELD eagle printed on the corner. The sleeve of his absent arm is pinned up so the fabric doesn’t trail down along his side.

He has black circles under his eyes, and a five o'clock shadow even though its only three thirty. The files said he was having debilitating nightmares; Steve knows how it feels, to some extent, when you're waking up from your own screams, covered in your own sweat and sometimes urine, thinking that its blood. His hair, much longer now, is just tiptoeing on the wrong side of dirty, hanging in limp curtains around his face. Steve thinks he himself probably looks like he's been dragged through hell tied to the back of a horse, so he can't say anything about Bucky's less than put-together appearance.

They’ve both pulled it together, when they look at each other again, faces somber.

“You’re alive,” the dark haired man whispers softly, before his whole body seems to tense up, turning his head away. “I’m - I’m not the same, Steve.” Bucky’s voice cracks. He clears his throat, looking down at his hand, which is curled into a fist on top of the table. “I’ve done so many awful things, I -” The fist tightens, knuckles white like they’re trying to escape the confines of his skin. “I’ve changed.”

“I’ve changed too, Buck,” he answers. “And what you did, that’s not your fault, they made you -” Steve stops and takes a deep breath, because no matter how much he thought he was prepared for this conversation before he stepped into the room, he sure as hell isn’t.

He wants to bypass all this pain and suffering, and jump to the part where they play happy families. Steve knows its not possible; he tried it himself when he woke up. He was fine, but he was also dying inside. You have to work through the shit before everything is sunshine and rainbows, that’s the reason he accepted a therapist from his neighbourhood spy agency.

Theres a lot of shit Bucky has to shovel his way through.

“Everything’s changed now, Bucky,” he says hesitantly, “The world’s changed. We’re biologically modified ninety something super soldiers, and thats not even the weirdest thing out there. Its -” Steve has to stop and think of the right word, because there are so many he could use right now, like overwhelming, or awe-inspiring, or amazing, but he just goes with “- terrifying.”

“I’ve fought aliens and gods and all-sorts since I woke up, Buck. Can you imagine little Steve Rogers fighting a big grey monster from a fantasy book?” Steve wants to laugh at the image too, because he could barely take a punch and stay standing back in the day. “I keep waiting to wake up to a drill sergeant shouting at me, or you poking me in the ribs with your damn elbows in Brooklyn.”

Bucky looks dubious, frowning at him from across the table. His hand loosens a bit. “Gods?”

“Well, they’re kind of aliens too; but they’re the good guys, mostly.” Steve thinks about how insane him must sound right now, and doesn’t blame Bucky for the man’s doubtful expression and furrowed brows. He wants to smooth the creases out with his fingers, but he doesn’t think he could do that.

But Steve does know that neither of them are good at talking about their feelings. Part of them still lives in the 1940's despite all the years and ice that's bridged them, and they still subconsciously suppress things, even with all of the therapy they’re on the receiving end of.

Bucky looks uncertain still, head slightly bowed, like Steve is pulling his leg just to spite him.

His head snaps up suddenly, his gaze piercing and eerie, and panic swirls, churns in under Steve’s ribs. He thinks Bucky's reverting back into the Soldier, but Bucky speaks before Steve can do anything.

"There's a memory that keeps coming back," he states, his voice flat and his eyes spacing out. "Its Brooklyn, but its - its a drawing?" His brows knit together in concentration, before continuing. "Its one of yours, isn't it?"

His gaze clears, and the man opposite him nods, biting into his bottom lip. Bucky's eyes trace the soothing rub of his tongue after with micro-precision.

A nurse enters the room, head peering tiredly around the heavy door. His hand curls around the side of the door, like he’s trying to ground himself against the sleep that pushes at him to lie down.

"I'm sorry, Captain Rogers, but I'm afraid you have to leave. Sergeant Barnes has a therapy session to attend." His voice is a deep baritone, flat and boredly robotic. His eyes betray the exhaustion running in his veins; they’re drooping, fighting to close while the nurse valiantly continues to stay alert.

Steve nods, and the nurse retreats. He stands to leave, looking at his reunited friend across from him.

"I'll come back tomorrow,” Steve tells him. “That is, if you want me to," he adds quickly, his forehead scrunching, giving Bucky the option to deny him. Bucky nods.

Steve gives the other a soft smile, fondness written under the skin of his face, and walks the few steps to the door.

"Steve?" He looks back at his friend, hand gripping the cool door handle. Bucky looks hesitant, like he’s trying to find the right words to convey what he wants to tell Steve."You loved me, didn't you?"

Its less of a question and more of a statement, not needing an answer specifically, but one is welcome all the same. Its wary and quiet, but Steve can hear the hope simmering far under the surface. He doesn’t even know if Bucky realises the undertone to his words.

"Yeah, Buck, I do." Steve closes the door behind him with his throat dry, and pretends that the door doesn't click automatically, locking a barrier of metal and plastic between them. Some hysterical part of him laughs inside himself at how cliche and stupid that goodbye was, like those unrealistic ‘rom-com’ movies that Clint told him to watch.

Tony is standing at the one-way glass, and Natasha is nursing one of those terrible in-house coffees, curled up on a plastic chair with her back to the window. They both look at him with something akin to pity.

Steve sighs, and runs his hand down his face. Apparently its becoming a habit. He drops into a vacant chair beside Natasha. A slender arm wraps around his shoulder, squeezing lightly.

He thinks that it must hurt, because that's the arm that the Soldier shot a bullet into, and she has to lean up to put it around his big shoulders. He's still so much bigger than her, even when they're sitting down. He appreciates the gesture.

"Didn't know you were an artist, Cap'n," Tony drawls, saying artist like 'ar-teast'.

Steve doesn't grace him with an answer.

*

Steve gets a delivery of art supplies in a box labelled Stark Industries, and Steve suspects that Pepper had nothing to do with it.

*

Bucky doesn't mention it again when Steve comes back the next day. Steve doesn't draw the stretch of Bucky's neck, or the strong line of his jaw.

*

Bucky’s therapist shouts at him, saying that telling Bucky that he loves him could compromise his recovery. Steve doesn’t see how.

But she keeps going on and on about hindering Bucky, becoming an emotional crutch so Steve loses it. He hasn’t shouted at anyone, properly shouted at someone since during the war.

“Would you much rather I lied to him?! After all the shit he’s been fed for the last 70 years?! Tell him, “Uh, shucks, Buck, but I don’t swing that way,” and walk away?” His hands slam down on the tabletop with a smack, with a force that would hurt someone who wasn’t a super soldier.

The few others in the room are tense, ready to tackle him if he does anything rash, but theres a conference table between him and Dr. Anncor. He couldn’t hurt her if he tried, he’d be shot before he could draw his own pistol, even if he had wanted to. He doesn’t. He knows how to be angry without being violent.

“He could think that the only reason you stick around because you previously were involved,” The doctor bites back, agitated.

He starts to respond, make a clipped comment, but Natasha wraps a hand around his wrist, her fingers barely making the circumference of his forearm. Steve looks at her, and sees the message loud and clear in her eyes, dark and steeled but also the slightest concerned.

 _Stand down_.

The tension flows out of his shoulders, slumping. He apologises to Dr. Anncor, who just nods, face hard. She is still tense, muscles tight and her arms crossed over her petite chest as way of a barrier.

“I can’t lie to him,” He states calmly, before leaving the room.

Nobody follows.

His hand itches for a pencil and his eyes itch for sleep. He doesn’t do either.

*

“I heard about what happened yesterday,” says a voice from behind him. Tony sidles up to his table, his hip leaning on the side and hand splayed on the formica. Theres a box cradled to the hip thats not casting a shadow over his work. “Capsicle’s got a temper.”

“What do you want, Tony?” He doesn’t look up from his paperwork, biro spinning in distracting circles between his fingers. His voice is exasperated and all he wants to do is see Bucky.

“I’ve just finished with Barnes’ arm.” Tony says, looking excited. Steve grunts noncommittally at the many forms under his large hand. He rolls his eyes, sighing at the other’s obvious disinterest. “I have to rig it up. You’d better get your spandex clad tush in gear if you wanna stop Queen Elsa from throttling me.”

Steve glares at him darkly.

“Up an’at ‘em, Kristoff.” Tony turns on his heel, and heads towards the door. The box jangles metallically at his side. Steve has no choice but the crudely shove all of the paper back into its folder and take it with him.

Rigging the arm up is easy enough. It’s molded to what’s left of Bucky’s arm, which is just the jut of his scapula under his skin. The brunet winces when it clamps around the protruding bone. The arm also covers half of his collarbone, fitting snugly into the scars of the last.

Tony keeps asking Bucky questions, and Steve can see it grating on him. He’s answering in monosyllables, short and tight. Tony sees that its irritating him, and only asks him the most important. He’s chatting constantly to fill the silence, as he always does. The whole scene makes Steve's mouth feel dry and his throat close up.

Tony isn’t here out of loyalty to SHIELD, because that was gone after Coulson died, nor out of pity for Bucky; he’s here for Steve because, in some awkward roundabout way, they’re friends. Their jabbing insults and snarky comments hide their comradery well, but thats what they are.

After Bucky wiggles his fingers, bends his elbow and rolls his shoulder, Tony lets them go.

Bucky is no longer confined to his room, and is free to walk around in open, secured areas with a chaperone. Steve feels that its a bit excessive, but doesn’t argue. If it means Bucky could get out faster, he’ll do it.

They walk aimlessly around the designated areas, hands stuffed in pockets like they did in Brooklyn. Bucky’s new hand flexes absently, flicking the artificial light along the wall.

“When’s the last time you drew something?” Bucky asks casually, but his shoulders are still a bit tense. Steve shrugs his own, and the two are standing so close together that Bucky feels the fabric of his friend’s shirt brush his. Steve knows what he’s doing; making sure Stevie is alright ahead of himself, like he always did, like he always needed to. In Brooklyn, in the trenches, and now in the twenty-first century.

It’s been two weeks near exactly since Steve put a pencil on paper. He created the curve of Bucky’s cupid bow and the point of his nose before he caught himself. The drawing is crumpled up under his pigeon holed desk in his flat.

Steve is still scared to draw Bucky; he feels that if he does, then Bucky will be ripped away from him again and he will be stuck immortalising that image on paper for the rest of his life.

“I’m fine, Buck,” he says, even though he knows that fine isn’t quite the word. Better, he guesses subconsciously, mending.

Bucky glances at him, and sighs. He knows how hard to push Steve, and he sure as hell bets that being punched in the face by this sized Steve would hurt a fuckload more than the one he grew up with.

When Steve escorts Bucky back to his room - an actual room, he’s been upgraded from the cell - Bucky wraps his flesh fingers around his wrist, halting him.

“Draw something, Stevie, it’ll make you feel better.” Bucky’s voice is serious, his face as close to pleading as Bucky Barnes could ever be. His friend turns on his heel, and the door clicks home near inaudibly.

*

Steve draws when he gets home. He draws Brooklyn and he draws his mother and he draws everything he misses about the thirties.

There’s two figures wrapped in each other’s arms, caught in the step of a waltz or maybe a Lindy Hop, Steve doesn’t know, and the girl’s dress fans out mid-movement with unrealistic grace. The old Wonder Wheel at Coney, a half-built Empire State Building that he remembers seeing when he was just a kid, and so many street corners that have been dug up and recemented now.

Steve doesn’t draw Bucky because he’s still scared of the future. If he drew Bucky smiling, eyes bright with mirth the way they were when he read the comics in the newspaper, or Bucky with his brow furrowed and his tongue poking out between two plush lips as he concentrated, he’d jinx it and never see it again.

*

“You loved me, didn’t you?”

The pencil screeches loudly on the page, crosshatching the shade with harsh lines. It’s late and dark, but the serum enhanced his eyesight and he can see clearly in the twilight. The shape is crude and formless but Steve understands what it is to him; its stress and anger and sorrow that he buries and pretends isn’t there because even if Captain America has to be relatable to the people, he’s still not really allowed to be human. It’s everything he’s avoided since the bridge, since “who the hell is Bucky?”.

Hell, its everything he’s shoved aside since he woke up in the mock 40’s room.

Steve needed to ignore it, he tells himself as the paper darkens under his ministrations. Save the world, fight the next good fight that knocks on his door. Save Bucky, fight for him.

“Yeah, Buck, I do.”

The pencil breaks.

*

They move back to New York, because no matter where they are, they are Brooklyn boys at heart and their home is always calling out to them. Steve smiles privately when he steps out of the car bringing him and Bucky to Avengers Tower.

Their stuff is there already, arriving in moving vans ahead of their flight. Pepper shows them to their floor (“Call me Pepper,” she tells Bucky with a crimson grin, when he greets her as ma’am), and apologises for Tony’s absence, but Steve and her share a relieved look. If Tony had seen them to their new home, he wouldn’t have stopped until every room had been presented and every high-tech gadget was explained with a linear of technobabble that would go over their pretty little heads.

Steve’s floor is an assault of red, white and blue, like the Fourth of July parade threw up on its way through. It borders on just the wrong side of tasteful. Bucky decides to skulk out the rooms, while Steve acts like a true gentleman and stays to talk with Pepper.

“But a whole floor?” he asks Pepper, unbelieving. Her modest pencil skirt, matching blazer and neat hairstyle are at war with the over-the-top decor of the room. “In red, white and blue?”

“Take it as a compliment, Steve,” shes answers, exasperated, but her tone is laced with fondness directed at her absent partner. “It could be worse; Clint’s floor has a bird theme.”

A laugh that sounds more like a huff of breath escapes his chest. He can imagine cuckoo clocks that sing on the hour and paintings of birds in flight galore. He can also imagine Tony’s resulting black eye.

“Woah, Steve, check this out!” Bucky calls from somewhere in the bowels of the apartment. Steve follows his friend’s voice with Pepper’s heels clicking behind him. He locates the room easily, the door wide open and the sound of Bucky’s movements filtering into the hall.

The first thing he notices about the room is that its bright. Really bright, but not bright in a way that is artificial or unnatural. It’s open and airy, and bigger than their whole matchbox apartment that they rented before the war. Desks and corkboards and cupboards line the walls to his right, and the left is plain, painted in a simple ivory, instead of the colours of the American flag.

But the far wall is completely made of glass, giving the illusion that the city is also a feature of the room. The afternoon sun gleams against the varnished wood of table tops and it touches an easel that is folded into one of the corners.

“It’s a studio.” Steve gapes a bit at the space. There are so many cupboards that Steve would bet his life on are filled to the brim with top of the range supplies. Peeking around a table is the edge of about five canvases.

Steve crosses to the nearest cabinet, pulls the door open and surveys the sheer amount of things inside. Paint pots and pastels and graphite are stacked orderly inside. Another houses enough sketchbooks for every day of the year, other fancy papers and boxes upon boxes of pencils varying in size and shape.

He feels a bit overwhelmed; he made do with a sketchbook, charcoal, occasionally coloured pencils if he could afford to restock them back in Brooklyn. He was more than grateful for them, what with how little money they had.

Steve’s so caught up in what he’s doing, he doesn’t hear Pepper say that she has to attend a meeting, or Bucky saying he’ll see her out.

The door shuts with the faintest creak, Bucky’s fingers clinking metallically against the door noob.

“He really likes it.” He grins lopsidedly, nodding his head towards the room they just left. “Tell Stark thanks.”

Bucky walks her to the elevators, making small chit-chat, and he involuntarily catalogs all of her weakest points. He hates that he does it, because its one of Soldier’s things they couldn’t dig out of his head, and because Pepper seems like a genuinely nice person. Someone he could trust.

(Okay, he doesn’t trust Pepper; he doesn’t trust anyone, except for Steve, and he trusts Tony not to fuck up with his arm, which is disconcerting in itself. He shouldn’t trust people, but he does and he feels exposed for already coming to trust two people in the time he’s gotten his memories back.)

“Pepper,” he starts when they reach the shiny metal doors. His brows furrow before he continues. “What was Steve like, after he woke up?”

She purses her red lips, is thoughtful for a second. “Quiet,” she says, “Mannerly. We all thought he was okay, coping with waking up, but -” She stops to sigh, Bucky hanging on every word that leaves her painted mouth. “He’s so much happier. He’s still quiet, but he’s not - he used to have this really neutral look on his face, and his eyes were empty, like he wasn’t really there the whole time. Now he’s a lot more relaxed.” She waits a beat before continuing, voice soft, “He’s happy you’re back, Sargent.”

“Bucky,” he corrects her.

“Bucky,” she agrees, a smile tugging at her lips.

*

It takes Bucky a week and a half to figure out that he hasn't seen Steve draw him recently. One snoop from the accumulated sketchbooks later, and he realises that Steve hasn't drawn him at all.

He needs to fix that

*

Bucky gets his chance, the next week, when Steve comes home from some mission that he can't say anything about, sorry, Buck.

If Steve doesn't drop straight into his oak framed bed after returning home from something uncover, he sits in the living room and sketches the view out the window.

When Bucky asked why, his friend said, with light embarrassment colouring his cheeks rosy, "it feels like I'm back in Brooklyn."

Steve is curled up on a slightly tacky stars and stripes upholstered arm chair, dragged closer to the window. The back of his hair looks almost brown with none of the natural light touching the shadow.

Bucky creeps closer, his socks brushing the carpet in the tranquil silence. Steve can definitely hear him approaching. He looks over Steves tshirt clad shoulder to see the drawing.

The skyline is breathtaking, phenomenal. Bucky wants to blow it up and wallpaper it over the pastel blue, red and white crap pasted on their walls.

"I woulda thought you'd've done enough of these by now," Bucky teases. His folded elbows are leaning on the back of Steve’s seat, his chin hovering over muscle and sinew so bulky that there's no way the hands at the end could logically be evoking the creation on the page.

Steve hums contently. "What else am I supposed to draw?"

"Me?”

Steve jerks, and turns his head to the right to look at Bucky. His face is full of something akin to fear, and Bucky wonders if he’s pushed Steve over a boundary that he wasn’t even aware was there.

“Buck…” Steve’s lips is caught between his teeth, and Bucky watches the way the skin gives under the hard white.

“Am I not good enough for you now, Stevie?” He teases weakly. “Got all those pretty girls lining up for you to draw them?”

Steve huffs a breath like a chuckle. “Better than your ugly mug, anyhow.”

They move to the couch, “because of the lighting,” Steve mumbles. He sits with his legs crossed underneath him.

Steve poses his pencil above the page, about to start. He looks at Bucky, looking at the details he's looked at a thousand times, scrutinising everything. Bucky feels like Steve is taking him apart with his eyes; not undressing him or risk assessing. This is completely new, but old too, he can feel the look echoing in his soul.

This, it reminds Steve of another life, of a scalding mug on a rickety fire escape whose floor digs into his backside. Expect he’s 70 years older in age, and a couple years older in spirit; except Bucky’s hair is in a knot at the base of his skull, and his metal arm stretches the fabric of his shirt in the slightest; except this is not his mother’s old flat, and this couch isn’t an uncomfortable wire mesh. Really the only relation between that and this scene is the silence filled with the chorus of lead and paper meeting.

Drawing Bucky is like an epiphany; Steve’s shoulders are still sagging under the weight of the whole world, but he can feel the excess falling away, rubble and scree tumbling down the side of the mountain on top of him. It’s water to a thirsty man, and Steve had no idea how much he’d needed to drink.

“Why’d you stop?” Bucky’s voice cuts through the cloud of relief that’s sending heat through his veins. “Drawing me, I mean. Why’d you stop?” The spell is broken and it leaves Steve feeling cold.

The nib hovers millimeters from the sketch.

“I was scared.”

“Scared?” Bucky repeats dubiously. What could scare Steve Rogers, Captain America, super hero, a skinny Brooklyn kid who got up every time he got knocked down? A hell of a lot of things, Bucky’s sure; but Bucky can count on one hand the amount of times he can remember Steve admitting he’s scared of something.

“Yeah.”

“What of?” Bucky watches him with curious worry, looks at the shadows throwing irregularity onto his best friend’s face.

“Losing you,” Steve doesn’t meet his gaze, but he stops drawing for a second. The scratches resume and Bucky watches the flick of his wrist absently.

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Steve echoes. They’re silent for a time.

“I’m not going anywhere, Steve.” Steve looks at Bucky with his big blues, and Bucky wants to kiss away the lines on his forehead, which is new, but also old; like it was a part of him under all the metal and guns, under the army uniform, under the scraps that his Ma resewed time and time again because anything more would mean they didn’t eat.

“Okay,” Steve’s voice is neutral as he looks down again, hanging in the air with the melody of sounds created, but it fades like the after crescendo of the songs on the radio that Bucky is growing to love.

Bucky reaches forwards with the metal arm, and wraps his hand around Steve’s wrist, ever so gentle because if Bucky squeezed too hard, the bones under his hand would crack. “Steve, I said ‘til the end of the line, and I mean it.”

Steve gives him a sad smile, like hes not totally convinced, but puts the pencil back to the page and draws Bucky in his entirety.

*

Steve whispers, “‘M scare, Buck. Of what I’ll do without her,” into the cotton of Bucky’s shirt in the dead of night, after his mother’s funeral.

“I don’t want you to go,” Steve slurs the night Bucky gets drafted. They get piss drunk because they’re so completely and utterly fucked. “Fuckin’ petrified of you not coming home.”

“Everything’s changed now, Bucky,” Steve says, running a hand absently through his hair. It’s a bit longer than it was, and Bucky sees every millimeter as the time he’s missed. “The world’s changed. We’re biologically modified ninety something super soldiers, and thats not even the weirdest thing out there. Its -” Steve flounders for the right word for seconds, before adding, “- terrifying.”

Bucky adds their conversation to the list.

*

Bucky, with his hair dangling in his face as he reads yet another book that Pepper gave him in the race to catch up with all he’s missed.

Bucky, his face smudged with smoke and gunpowder, wielding a rifle with his flesh hand on the trigger.

Bucky, stifling a yawn after getting up only for the smell of coffee and bacon, his real shoulder broad and muscular and the false one glinting the morning sunlight.

He wants to draw them all.

Steve tries not to stare, and he thinks he’s good at being subtle, but Bucky is an assassin; he knows when he’s being watched.

He doesn’t mind.

*

“Bucky, stay eastbound, theres another group headed towards you,” Steve’s voices crackles over the comm. Bucky takes out another three more - things, he actually has no idea what they are. Creatures? Aliens? He shoots row of them down while pondering it.

“Gotcha, Cap,” he responds, his finger pressuring the trigger into shooting another round. His voice lilts with sarcasm, ever present when he calls his friend by his title. He can almost hear Steve’s resulting smile in the following statical silence.

He ends up swamped in the creatures just off Times Square, and he’s running out of ammo quick. Soon he’ll only have his knives to defend himself with; he’s more than capable with them, but the average minion’s blood is a bitch to get out of his kevlar. You can’t just put super-spy gear through a rinse cycle.

“Getting heavy up my end,” he grunts into the commutator, the line buzzing in his ear.

“Tony, head up towards Bucky. Natasha keep north-west on 41st.” The weight of Steve’s commands don’t lessen, even if the words are bitten and slightly breathless.

When his gun clicks, barrel empty, he grabs a knife from the plethora strapped to his person. He slashes at the ugly beasts with fervor, before blurred red followed by dancing flames flies over his head.

Tony shoots at them, sending groups flying through the air in bursts of rubble dust and sparks. The suit is hovering low enough for one creature to snatch at its ankles, and Tony kicks it before its scaly long fingers can wrap around the red metal plating.

But soon the others get the same idea, and theres a group scrabbling under his booted feet. Bucky’s too far away to help, and there are too many brutes around him to get a clear shot, if he even had any bullets left.

Bucky wonders why he doesn’t just fly higher, but then the left boaster sheathing his calf flickers and goes out. It’ll all Tony can do to stay upright with only one boot working as well as the crowd thats assembled below him.

Tony fires more flare like lazer-bullets - Bucky hasn’t got a clue how the suit works, so don’t quote him - but another jumps for the space that its fallen comrade vacates. They manage to crawl somewhat up the suit, closing its grey grip around the armoured forearm. It dents in, and theres the fizz of electricity that even Bucky can hear.

Lights flare in quick succession from Tony’s arm, hitting everything in its line of fire. Bucky tucks and rolls out out of shot, and Tony gets the building behind him.

Which would be okay, only for the fact that said building starts to collapse.

Bucky runs, tries to get out of range of the crumbling debris, but no matter what enhanced abilities Zola’s bastardized super serum gave him, he can’t outrun the laws of physics.

Thats his last thought before he’s surrounded by rock and dust clings in his lungs.

He floats for a while, darkness supporting his body like he’s in water. Bucky doesn’t panic, its too calm in the black void to panic; there's nothing but a distant sound too faint to define. The sound slowly grows louder, clearer and more pronounced. He can hear the separation between the beats. It’s to his right, and he becomes aware of the pain in his head, his hip, his flesh arm.

A groan catapults from his lips, finding his mouth, then upon opening his eyes, he finds them too. His left arm is gone, but when he rolls his neck to the side, he spots it on a cabinet behind Steve’s sleeping figure. His friend is curled up on a hospital issued chair like he’s still ninety pounds soaking wet, a pencil hanging from his lax hand, threatening to fall from his grip.

Bucky watches him sleep and hes so forcefully reminded of how many times Steve was the one bedridden as Bucky watched over him. His brow is creased with a sleeping frown, the corners of Steve’s plush lips down turned. Bucky feels the ever-increasing desire to kiss the early wrinkles in his face build up, and he squishes it down, because he’s not sure if he wants this yet.

*

Bucky likes to watch Steve create; whether it be his face as he maps the contours of his team mate’s faces, or his hands over his shoulder from across the room, wielding a paintbrush with the same solid certainty he does with his shield, Bucky knows every flick of the wrist and drag of his fingers like the back of his own tissue and blood hand.

*

In hindsight, it ends up being incredibly anti-climatic, when they kiss.

Bucky doesn’t make excuses for crawling into Steve’s bed anymore, he just hogs his blankets and press his cold feet to Steve’s shins “because you’re a fuckin’ furnace, Steve.”

Steve doesn’t mind. Bucky doesn’t lash out in his nightmares so much now, and when he does, Steve knows how to handle him. Don’t touch, get out of range of his limbs, talk until he wakes up.

(It took him a while to learn; but his jaw healed back sturdy in two days, so it’s fine, Bucky, really.)

Mornings are nice. Steve likes mornings, which is why he goes running. There is no one on the streets other than the lone dog walkers and early commuters, so he can see the sun rising completely over the buildings that stretch so high over his blond head.

But some mornings, he stays in bed and watches the sun come up through the little gap between the shade and the window sill, Bucky half lying on top of him because apparently that's how he sleeps. He probably thinks of Steve as another pillow to be aggressively cuddled.

One such morning, Steve watches oranges and pinks slip into their monochrome bedroom, watches at the clothes thrown over a spare chair turn from greys and blacks to yellows and deep blues, the bedsheets lightning up.

Bucky’s face is smashed into the crook of Steve’s neck, the bared metal of his left hand curled in Steve’s shirt at his far hip, arm slung across the breadth of his abbed stomach. His stubble scratches his neck, but its followed by the moist breath of Bucky’s silent snores.

Steve looks down at him, observes the way the rising light throws one half of his face into shadow because of his nose, the faint creases in his forehead as he sleeps, drooling onto his plain white shirt. He’s beautiful, and Steve memorises his best friend’s face so that he can draw it later.

When Bucky’s eyes flutter open, grey-blue squinting against the light now halfway into the room, crusted with sleep and not nightmare induced tears, Steve smiles down fondly at his friend, whole body warm with sleep driven affection.

Bucky stares into Steve’s eyes, and sees the adoration there, sees the love residing along side the worry and the curiosity, and he finally feels it. He thought he felt it, when Steve drew him in Brooklyn time and again, and when they went to war, the worry more pronounced, and then again when they stood in that white cell with “Yeah, Buck, I do,” hanging in the air between them like a damn palpable fog.

But this is the real thing; the first and second and third all felt like the phantom hands that the doctors warned him about, with his left limb gone, but this was a tight grip around his heart and he never wanted the clenched fist to ever let go.

It’s awe-inspiring, and completely new; but it still feels old, like the way Steve draws him with the air of novelty every time lead meets egg-shell white paper.

Bucky pulls up onto his real elbow, with his false hand still balled in Steve’s shirt, and looks him up and down, before brushing their lips together, like Steve is still made of spun sugar. It’s soft and hesitant, and Bucky can feel his pulse bumping inside his ribs, knocking against the bones like they’re made of wood and it wants to be let out.

Steve’s lips are soft and his breath is vile, Bucky is sure his own is too. Steve’s hand runs up his fake bicep and around to his back, languid and soft, Bucky wonders why it took them so long to fucking get here.

Oh, yeah. They’re major idiots.

*

When April of 2016 rolls around, it’s fair to say that Steve and Bucky suffer from a weird kind of nostalgia that settles into their bones.

It’s been 100 years since the 1916 Easter Rising that contributed to Ireland - their parents’ country - being declared a republic.

Steve works on a picture. He uses the fancy oil paints that he daren’t touch before, the ones he was saving for something special (even if Tony would have just ordered more of him, no sweat, had he used them).

He paints the GPO - the General Post Office - looking up the cobbles to the stone building. The bullet holes in the pillars, now long eroded from the Irish rain he grew up hearing so much about and smoothened, are a renewed kind of harsh and jagged. Blood is spilled on the steps, but there are no bodies, no one around the ghostly rebel base, but a young blonde woman, facing the building. Her head is tilted back as she looks up at the shot masonry.

A green, white and orange flag flutters high in the wind.

He paints it with an ache in his heart, because this is dedicated to his mother.

Sarah fled the fighting and her home, immigrating to the city Steve now loves most. She taught him the beauty of the Irish language, told him stories and, even if he can’t dance to save his life, taught him how to ceili. She never saw her home become it’s own republic, but Sarah loved it, until the very end.

The street is gritty, his hands are colourful, and Bucky brings him a coffee in the morning when he’s stayed up all night to finish it. Bucky kisses his temple, with his arms around his shoulders as they look on at the canvas.

“She’d be so proud of you, Stevie,” his best friend mumbles into the crown of his head.

“I hope so.”

When it’s revealed that Captain America painted the picture that now hangs in Áras an Uachtaráin, the President’s house, the American media grips the story tight and doesn’t let go.

Steve’s PR team makes a statement about it. Everyone speculates who the woman is (A childhood friend? Unknown lover? Or is she just a symbol of the Irish People?), and a few guess right, but Steve never confirms that it is his mother.

Steve only ever paints people or things or places that are important to him.

*

Saturday is Movie Night in Avengers Tower, and if you’re not on a mission or laid up in bed from the aftermath of one or otherwise occupied, you are expected to be there.

Everyone is here tonight, the regular gang as well as their various satellites; Jane is curled under Thor’s big arm; Darcy is talking to Rhodey about who knows what over the gap of the sofas; Maria and Coulson (who is, in actual fact, not dead) have dragged Clint into a debate about Harry Potter - which Steve still needs to cross off his list, go figure; Sam and Nat are doing their weird platonic flirting thing - Steve doesn’t want to know - next to where Bruce is talking animatedly to Ian who has a smile lighting up his young face; Happy and Pepper are laughing uproariously about something on the loveseat; Tony and Bucky are standing to the side arguing playfully about Bucky’s arm.

They haven’t even started Sharknado yet (he thinks it’s Clint’s night to pick the movie), and Steve sketches them with a content smile on his face.

A god and his scientist girlfriend, two assassins, a master archer, two major genius’, a colonel, a bird man, two interns, a CEO, a security guard and two super agents. His friends; His family; His home.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, you're still here hi howya doing?
> 
> Firstly, I want to apologise about any non Americanisms. I'm Irish, not American (and, okay, I let a few Irish-isms slip in for plot importance, shh). This is also unbeta'd because 1. I've been writing this for two months and 2. I's nearly 1am and I'm so happy to post it I just can't wait.
> 
> This piece really broke me out of my 6 month long writer's block, so I'm a bit rusty, and if you decide to leave some constructive criticism (which is incredibly, incredibly welcome) don't be too harsh, because this fic is basically my baby. This also may lead to slight inaccuracies, character wise, but I think for the most part its on par with MCU characterisations.
> 
> This fic is based largely on art, and any terms used are those that I have learned from roughly two years of second level education Art classes, so if they're not accurate, its because I'm not in art school.
> 
> Some of the details are smudged slightly, cinematically and historically.
> 
> Thanks to you for reading


End file.
